


Follow Me In Symbols

by davefoley



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Content, but generally as compliant as it could be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davefoley/pseuds/davefoley
Summary: “Don’t think me crude Napoleon,” you mumble as he rolls over and curls up next to you like a child, a small child who covets a comfort object. “But you have to get laid sometimes.”He silently laughs into your chest. “Yes,” he rasps, opening and closing his fingers right where the bullet went through you. “Often.”
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Follow Me In Symbols

He bites back a curse as he throws his whole fist into the wall. It’s the cavity type: two walls, facing each other — dead space in between. Hollow and insular. His fist goes right through the first, with only the scraped knuckles to show for it. Not one to swear or curse or spit. There’s a stilted yelp on the other side of the second but whoever is there doesn’t come to investigate.

“I can’t keep losing you out there,” Napoleon says. He’s assessing the damage on his hand. In the larger picture, the largest picture imaginable, it meant nothing. Ointment he’ll rub in like worries on a stone and foundation even, to hide the marks. The wall is beige and creamy.

“You won’t,” you say, and you know it falls flat, even when you damn well mean it, what with you on the motel bed recovering from a bullet wound, barely keeping on. That and bruises and stiff muscles and sores from hiding in cramped spaces, spaces that can’t make space for plain old space because of the darkness, and you. It was where the great gazes of the eyes could not reach.

He can’t stand it and walks over to straddle your prone body.

“I’m your superior,” he says.

“I’m aware,” you dryly retort back. Deeply so.

“Your wellbeing is my responsibility,” he continues.

“But so is the success of the mission at hand,” you bite back.

His body, like a tent over you lifts up and he strips himself of his jacket, then his tie, and then his shirt and undershirt and he stops at his belt. The weight of him is tempting against your cock, which remains terribly responsive. And, aside from when the dressing down involves obscuring his face a little, he refuses to take his eyes off of you.

“We did a good job today,” you remark out loud while he looks distantly into the bandages on your stomach like they were a mirror, because in fairy tales it’s what gives you answers. “We caught Miller. We stopped the device. The minister was saved.”

“And nobody died,” Napoleon slips his belt off and leaves his hands on the band of his trousers, “is that it? Is that all?” In the morning he would pay for the damages to the wall out of his own pocket and omit this incident from the report when he returns to UNCLE headquarters. You know this.

“Yes I think,” what else is there to say? “You’re sitting on my erection, would you rather think about something else for a change?”

And Napoleon, of course, doesn’t answer, and sits off of you to take off his pants and boxers and then comes back to pull your pants down enough to reveal your cock, engorged and wanting, and you give him the lubricant wordlessly and he gets to work and then he gets to work and you both come with the breath taken out the both of you.

“Don’t think me crude Napoleon,” you mumble as he rolls over and curls up next to you like a child, a small child who covets a comfort object. “But you have to get laid sometimes.”

He silently laughs into your chest. “Yes,” he rasps, opening and closing his fingers right where the bullet went through you. “Often.”

You reach over with some difficulty towards the bedside lamp and turn it off, bathing the both of you in darkness.

——

“You have to kill that part of you,” Napoleon Solo explains as you stand among other Section 2 agents, all clad in crisp clothes and eyes like pools of water, looking so openly and reverently at UNCLE’s best agent. His crime is being an agent for only a small amount of years and in that time frame, becoming the precocious, perhaps prodigal, star of the entire New York branch.

“You can’t afford to show weakness in that way, because it will kill you, and you know when it’ll kill you, because you’ll think about what you did in the last second you’re alive and then—“ he swiftly pulls out his pistol, and wildly spins around and shoots one of the training dummies in the forehead— “It’s over.” Then he blows the smoke off the gun’s barrel while your comrades spill enthusiastic applause into Solo’s lap.

He settles the class down. “Now I don’t consider myself the shining example of this,” he disclaims with some simulacrum of modesty, “I like any other person, am human, and I wrestle with it everyday of my life. But if you see where I am now, leader of Section 2 and potential head of UNCLE New York altogether, you can see I reaped my advice enough to harvest bounties and bounties of benefit.” They all titter or look on approvingly. Your silence provokes Solo to walk towards you.

“Did you get all of that Mr. Kuryakin?” he asks, an air of smugness around his glibness.

“Yes,” you answer, tampering down the passive aggression that you feel expelling out of you like smoke. “Your advice will no doubt save our lives when it comes down to it.”

“When it comes down to it,” Solo challenges your eyes with his own and you wonder if you should feel naked or put out in front of him, and that the thought doesn’t phase you, it feels astoundingly natural to be in this harrowing state. “It being down to the very wire most times, in this line of work.”

You don’t say anything but he ascertains you’ve gotten the memo, and seemingly returns to addressing everyone else. “You are all no doubt,” he says, “fine men and women. I’m happy to say you are all now officially UNCLE agents.”

People from outside the training room, other UNCLE agents, file in and blow party poppers and pop champagne and wheel in chocolate cake with ganache and _Class of 195X_ in blue icing. Your classmates disperse to celebrate and mingle with their new coworkers while you look on, long enough that Solo comes to stand next to you.

“Happy to finally be an UNCLE agent, Kuryakin?” He rocks on his heels and Merriweather, a crackerjack shot and a gorgeous brunette, hands him a slice of cake. “Why thank you,” he takes a bite and beams at her.

She returns a flirty grin and flocks back to the others, but not without regarding you with respect, as she was under your tutelage during the final trial. “Kuryakin,” she says, as she nods at you and you nod at her. She leaves and Solo absorbs this with an amused sense of intrigue.

“Already a hit with the ladies I see,” he remarks. You almost stare daggers at him. “But, anyway, I wanted to congratulate you personally on being the most promising recruit we have.” He looks at the velvet box you hold in your hand, containing inside a medal as proof of your outstanding performance in the UNCLE training program. “Those people in Finance really splurge on these things,” he explains, and so you open it and really take a look at the craftsmanship within. “Nothing but the best for the best.”

“I will admit it’s rather nice,” you confess, and take a glass from your pocket to see the medal up close. Gold, real gold, and not the chintzy kind but definitely not a 24 karat affair either. Of all the gems they could put, a tiger’s eye was what they put in the middle. It’s not the kind of medal you could wear, only to keep close as a symbolic gesture. Solo laughs.

“Tiger’s eye is my choice,” he also explains. “It used to be a real nice ruby,” then he leans over to you like he’s releasing an unbidden secret, “but it was so garish, and I think a little superstition is fine in moderation.”

“Superstition?” you pocket your glass and run your thumb over the tiger eye’s smooth surface. “To my recollection, the tiger’s eye does have a protective property in some cultures.” And, looking at it further you find its appearance more and more similar to that of evil eye charms sold by vendors in foreign countries in the East. “From the evil eye.”

“Yes,” Solo’s warm eyes appraise the medal quite lovingly, “it also represents self confidence, stability among chaos, and being able to realize your true desires.”

“Something of that caliber shouldn’t be awarded to some bright upstart of a graduating class,” and then you close the box. “Already leagues ahead of his colleagues. What a decadent demonstration of class hierarchy.”

Solo’s eyes gleam when they flit back to yours. “You’re right,” he says, “I see self confidence is hardly what you’re lacking.”

“There’s more to the tiger’s eye than the human eye can behold, isn’t there?”

“It can make you ask questions of yourself,” he answers, “and make you suit action to words. It encourages you to dispel fear and inspire determination and manifest your desires into reality through physical action.”

“You sound like one of those chain smoking bohemians,” wordlessly laughing, you slip the box into your suit jacket, “those wandering soothsayers.” Then you regard Solo with some renewed sense of respect. “Do you know what the ruby represents?”

“Nope.” Merriweather comes over and asks quietly of Solo’s company in another part of the room, perhaps to be told that she’s free tonight for dinner and would appreciate a companion to keep the celebration going.

You look on, and then realize you wish you asked him first.

——

“Five more minutes,” you grunt as sweat runs down your brow. “I need five more minutes and I’ll have the sequence deactivated.”

“You’re cutting it close, Kuryakin,” Solo is fending off a goon left on the lurch by his leaders. They all fled the scene at the first sound of the machine’s voice, declaring that the self destruction sequence was activated and would decimate the facility in 15 minutes. Solo wrestles with him until he manages to push him back, then punches him in the gut when he comes barreling toward him. “And you, why can’t you stay down?”

The goon’s response is to tackle him down again, pushing the breath out of him once more. No doubt will he be dealing with a blossoming bruised sternum later.

You’re frantically dismantling the sequence in the meanwhile. It’s a simplistic thing — the expectation with a self destruction sequence apparently, is that the announcement alone would make everybody eager to escape before attempting to fix it. It’s a mere matter of deducing the parts that activated it and shutting them down, sort of like lockpicking or safecracking, but with extra wires.

Solo slams his fists down onto the goon’s head and the goon falls over, finally unconscious.

“Alright, we have 7 minutes left,” Solo takes a wheezy breath of relief before hobbling over to you, his ankle broken by a goon earlier. “If you can’t break this in the next 2 minutes, I want you to take the data and make a run for it.”

“And leave you behind?” you scoff, fiddling with the main panel and parting the wires and circuitry to find more wires and more circuitry. “Forget it. I’m almost done.”

“My ankle’s no good,” he reasons and slides down next to you, leaning himself against your right leg. An odd quirk of his — touchy in ways that implied an unknown sense of intimacy between you two. He’s been doing it since the first mission Waverly paired you two up and you’ve brooked no argument yet, even within yourself. “And the staircase is closer than the elevator.”

“Hop on one leg until we get to the exit for all I care.” You feel comforted by his weight below you. You wouldn’t have attempted to solve this had you been alone you would have... Let yourself die, and become complacent in death that the intel was nobody’s in the end.

It’s the implication of taking Solo down with you that gets you. Makes you feel like you made a tremendous upset. If this all blows, swear to G-d that people would find your corpse in the rubble, twisted in a pose of sheer guilt and agony over your mistake.

“Pushy Russian,” he drily responds. “I think I pulled some muscles in my thighs, how about that? Would you leave me now, knowing a charley horse has rendered me incapable of moving?”

“Annoying,” you brusquely say. “You’re annoying,” was what you wanted to say in full. Goaded by Solo’s lack of faith, you believe you’re in the final stretch. “When this is all over...” And then you stop when Solo’s weight becomes heavier on your leg. You spare the seconds to look down and you find he’s passed out from sheer exhaustion. For basically having been your security escort for most of the mission, staying up and guarding you from anything that would deter you from doing your job, you couldn’t fault him.

Smiling, just a little, you fetch your wire cutters and snip the red wire nestled between the larger ones. The loud sirens and alarms peter out until darkness swarms you, only for the lights to return to normal a moment later.

“Self destruction sequence canceled.”

You sigh, not feeling the weight of your success quite so well as Solo threatening to use you as a wall to lean on. Turning around, you carefully slide down next to him so his head rests against your shoulder. You pull out your communicator.

“Open Channel D please,” you call into the cigarette case, “overseas relay. I’ve rendered the self destruction sequence at the facility inert and am requesting backup for disposal, retrieval, and,” you glance over to Solo, who’s begun to snore a little. “A stretcher. Mr. Solo’s injuries need some looking after.”

“Location has been triangulated,” the secretary’s voice is tinny on the speaker. “Backup will arrive in 20 minutes.” A second passes, and then she adds, “In the meanwhile, do keep Napoleon out of trouble,” before ending communication. If only you could tell her.

You slip your communicator back into your pocket. In the silence of the moment, you decide to rest your eyes as well, using the tactile sensation of Napoleon’s body against you to remind you that you’re alive and well, and that by proxy, so is he. He has to be.

——

The woman, rambling and mad, throws her clothes on as fast as possible before skipping out of Napoleon’s bedroom, her breasts askew and her hair like hay blustering in the wind. You listen to her feet pattering across the floor and then the slam of the door outside. Napoleon, mouth agape, shuts it and looks at your presence looming uncomfortably at the door.

“Really Kuryakin,” Napoleon hides his chest with the sheets and admonishes you, before sliding off the bed anyway to grab his clothes. He drags one of them along to cover himself from the waist down. “could you come at a better time? Any other time?”

“You’re a lot less scandalized than a person would be, being caught naked and in the act by their subordinate,” you lean against the doorframe and cross your arms. “Has this happened before?”

“Would it ingratiate you,” he says, as he walks to his vanity to check his hair, “if you knew the answer was yes, often?” He looks at you coolly from the mirror, as if you were some regular night time apparition. One he regards with some curiosity, going off the glint in his eye peeking coyly beyond his shoulder.

“Not at all.” This part of Napoleon didn’t surprise you at all, it was basic workplace gossip — he’s a Lothario, a bona fide chaser. You’ve seen glimpses of it during some missions, but until now, you never really thought about it.

“Well, nothing to be ashamed of,” he finishes buttoning his shirt and moves onto his tie with brisk efficiency. “Did you like her?” he asks cruelly.

“What?”

“The woman who ran out,” he answers, “works at Carmine’s on the late night shift.” Slipping his suit jacket over his arm, he stands but a foot across from you with so much suggestion it would burst from the seams of his clothes. “Beautiful eyes. Like a cat’s.”

“I didn’t catch a glimpse of her face,” you respond bluntly, in the monotone register he jabs you for time and time again. “Just that her breasts were marked with bites.” And he must think of you as a child for sounding so reticent about the observation. Her hair hid a pretty solid jawline. Had you looked too long, you would have noticed Napoleon’s body was covered in scratches and bites too, like he had been mauled by a mountain lion. But you didn’t.

Napoleon’s face is punchable. “Naughty boy, you,” he chides, and then he walks past and grabs his shoulder holster along the way. “Alright, now you know of my terrible pleasure. My one weakness even. Shall we go to Del Floria’s for a pants pressing?”

You follow him in silence and without a retort. The turmoil of being human has made you shutter out, and left you drinking small beams of light through the blinds. In this room, all you hear is the furtive scratching and unhinging of nails from the boards outside like someone begs to be let in, and you know, you know, who it is. You just wonder if he knows who you are.

——

“Do you plan on taking her with you?” you stutter, awkwardly, because you’ve lost your ability to enunciate 5 minutes in. Your tongue squabbles to formulate sounds with an invisible cotton ball over and under it. “You’re crazy, Solo.”

“How can’t I,” is all Napoleon says, his arms cradling the small body in his hands. The small body, with still a spark in it, accepts his warmth graciously. “If we make it out of here alive, she might still live yet.”

“If,” you supply like some heartless maniac, “if we get out alive. They’ve probably got all the exits blocked at this point.” But the fact that THRUSH men haven’t barged into this room yet is a stunning demonstration of their incompetence. Amongst the sounds of what practically amounts to fire and brimstone are their footprints and yelling and wondering where the hell the UNCLE agents were hiding, because they might as well make a point of making sure you two were double dead on top of plain dead.

Napoleon stands up with the girl in tow, her head bleeding on his grey suit. One of her arms twisted in a way that you couldn’t tear your eyes away from it but you had to, else you wouldn’t stand it. Her mother, the remnants of her anyway, were gingerly laid to rest on the bed with the sheets covering her. This building was falling apart and THRUSH wanted nothing more than for it to be your tombs.

“You’re not that sick Illya,” he mutters, to himself more than to you, guessing by how he used your first name. One and the same on that mark. “We’re all decent, good people inside.”

“That may be true,” you carefully approach him from behind and put your hand on his shoulder. He leans into it, though it’s not clear he heard you. “But it’s more important we do what we can to survive, even if it means we have to bite and hiss and scratch for it.”

The girl moans out for her mother and Napoleon shushes her so, so gently.

“She’s doing everything she can, Kuryakin—” Napoleon turns towards you and you make a point to make eye contact with him rather than the girl, but in your peripheral you caught a glimpse of her arm flopping far too wrongly and the sick surges in your throat like a geyser. “Can’t we do our part to make sure all her efforts don’t go to waste?”

You agreed with Napoleon’s words. You agreed with them so much you hated yourself for it. You wanted to scream at him and tell him that he was a hypocrite for something, because everything he was saying computed just fine and yet it shouldn’t—

You thought of how incapicitated Napoleon would be in his position trying to maneuver out of a burning building with a small child in tow. Having to be so gentle with her because her arm’s so fucked she’d be lucky to keep it if they made it out— 

She’d be lucky if you two even make it out, because then comes the question again of how Napoleon will do it. How you’ll pick up the slack while trying to defend them both from the THRUSH men swarming like locusts outside, locusts because this conversation was a plague, and it was rendering you incapable of thinking of anything else but how to bring the prodigal son back to his father—

and you felt so delirious and sick inside that sickness was becoming a part of you, it’ll become all of you and you might let it so you and Napoleon can get out of here. In questions communicated with no words there was still an answer, and it was the worst answer of all—

You loved Napoleon. You loved him so much you didn’t want to think about it. You didn’t want to think about how much you loved him for everything including this terrible colossal mistake he wants to make and how right now you love him so much you want to go against his wishes, leave the damn child behind, because, at least she’ll be with her mother, curled up around her—

You try to look at her and see if your eyes could dig into her sternum and see the exact state of her poor beating heart, for what a conundrum it is, to survive alone—

If just Napoleon got out, you would die for your cause.

But to die together would be your greatest desire, wouldn’t it?

You look back up at Napoleon’s blistering and tremulous eyes, pleading with you to find human sense. The irony is he’s your superior isn’t he? He could pull his weight on you easily, order you like he really should, and demand you bow down.

But he begs you instead with his determination and his hypocrisy for something, his imploring of the strength of your own character, his hypocrisy, his being a hypocrite, a terrible spy, a good person—

“Stay close to me then.” You look away from his engulfing gaze and turn around entirely. “I guess if you think about it, the sounds of THRUSH’s men outside means this building’s still holding up pretty well.” A moment passes, and then you decide to add, “We’ll have to stay out of trouble for the most part.”

“Or we’ll die trying?” Napoleon says, and it hits like a shot — bullet and whisky.

“Yes,” is all you say back. You move towards the door leaving here and look back a second, to see Napoleon grabbing a doll off the floor and tucking it into the girl’s front cardigan pocket.

Yes, you thought. If you and Napoleon were going to die trying, it figures the girl should have a companion too.

——

“A Russki,” the man remarks, while you drink swill customary to the joint and the overall atmosphere. “In America. That’s something. You a defector?”

“I am here on business, you could say.” You take that burning in your throat and imagine it as a ball rolling down and landing in the net of a billiards table hole. Filling an emptiness inside you. It was satisfying. You look at him in this sly way that seems to excite others. It’s really you just riding your mild buzz.

“Cool, cool,” he noncommitedly comments. Then he eyes you toe to top and grins at you. “Ever fucked an American before?”

“I highly doubt fucking an American is any different from fucking some Brit,” you finish off your third shot and motion for another, “or a Swede. An Italian.” and when you grab your refreshed drink you remind yourself your gun is at home and you have only a pen knife. “A German,” you continue. “Ever fuck a Nord?”

“No sir,” he seems to take great pleasure in eliciting any kind of conversation from you, provided, it is perhaps because he’s counting how many drinks you’re having before you’re considered free game. “I mean, maybe— do all Nords have lips like yours?”

“I wouldn’t know,” you say loudly, “I don’t discriminate like some others.” Letting that comment hang in the dead air for a moment causes him to deflate slightly. You smile at that. “Really, can’t you tell when someone’s pulling your leg?”

He perks up immediately and comes closer. “I’m serious, man,” he says, in some seductive deeper register, “I’m red-blooded and all-American. One night with me, maybe you’ll get a taste for the American way.”

“What a disgusting thought,” you answer. “But I’ll let you try.”

He escorts you out of the bar to a motel room and you let him demonstrate his American hospitality. You’re no less mollified than when he was blandly talking about his work saving innocents from the neighbourhood swimming pool.

It was that moment of helplessness he showed when you retracted your niceties that convinced you to follow through in the first place. Showing a little coldness made him shrink in that desperate kind of way, enough to make him drop the airs for a second, ready to beg if he had to. To be wanted like that is honestly addicting. It’s a shame it’s not enough for you.

“How was that, my little Soviet?” Cooing, he rubs under your chin and he’s everything honey is: cloying, overbearing by itself, getting everywhere you wish it wouldn’t— “Did fucking an American exceed your expectations?”

“I thought I told you I had no expectations for difference,” and you say it coldly but since you still fucked him, his amorousness embellishes him and emanates off him like heat. Maybe it’s the heat, the sweltering, sweltering heat — it’s balmy tonight in New York and the breeze just shifts it around. “You got a cigarette?” You don’t really smoke.

“No, I don’t. There’s a machine downstairs, shall I go?”

“I knew this night was missing something.”

“You do Marlboros? Lucky Strikes? Camel?”

“Something I couldn’t take for myself unlike anything else.”

“Newports?”

“The Luckies,” you answer, because you need some time to think alone. “Maybe because I’m feeling lucky.”

He grins and abides by your request. How unlucky the night really is. And the windows sweat like the walls wish they did, into a puddle on the floor with all the other secrets that come to die in these places.

——

The bullet rips through you, and for a second, you thought you reached nirvana.

Instead, it was his voice, cutting through the sounds of the screaming and tiny explosions, the bashing and crashing of the fight.

“Illya!”

This was enough, you thought. If you could bottle this moment and place it on your mantle, you so very much would.

He somehow handles the rest. The sounds of the screaming and tiny explosions, the bashing and crashing of the fight, came to an eerie end in the echoes of the ballroom.

Napoleon holds your still upright body and you feel eminently buoyed by his embrace. The son holding the lamb, slain but standing, and then letting it know victory was granted to them on account of its magnificent sacrifice.

Only that’s not what happened.

“Illya!”

“Go,” you grit your teeth and dart behind a partition just in time for a man to come flying over it. “They’re escaping with the machine, you have to go!”

Napoleon looks at you warily, and his seconds of hesitance could kill him.

“GO!”

He goes, and you grab a pistol that slides towards you conveniently and you get one — you get two — you get three, until Napoleon is granted safe passage to the exit, in hot pursuit of THRUSH.

The lamb was often forgotten to be a lion, who in its might would slay all evil through its sacrifice. Its death would never be in vain, though others might weep for it.

Let them weep, you thought.

Only you’re not slain yet.

——

“See this string?” Cricket delights less in teaching but in talking. She accepts your naturally quiet disposition as an opportunity to fill dead air. “Do you know what it means?”

“Not particularly.” She’s also here in New York to promote the overseas distribution of her film. She thought it interesting that she’d find you in the street on your way to UNCLE and then be let in to bother you, on the premise that she probably could keep a secret. Miss Okasada was on Waverly’s good side.

“It’s the red string of fate,” she explains, “it’s a famous East Asian belief — the string is said to connect you and your one true love together.”

“Sounds inconvenient.”

“The string stretches as long as it needs, the point is it never breaks.” Cricket then looks at the string in her hands. “Even in death. Plus, it’s invisible. Intangible, even. It’s what you would say is an extremely metaphorical concept.” She wiggles it in your face a little and you bat it away.

“But it is red,” you note, annoyed for many reasons, one being that Napoleon had to return to Japan on short notice for some kind of diplomatic reason, and declined to bring you along. “Does that colour have significance?” Of course, you hate diplomatic conventions.

“Of course it does,” Cricket chirps. “In Japan, the colour speaks of passion, blood, prosperity, and self sacrifice. But I believe many cultures have the same thing.”

“Such things are all part of the great mystery of love,” you realize drolly. That kind of stuff seems to straddle the line between love language and professional obligation.

“You know, you’re kind of boring without Napoleon here,” she opines, before taking your hand and placing the long line of string bundled up in your palm and closing your fingers around it. “No matter,” she says, “have the string on me. Maybe when you find your true love, you’ll loosen up a little more.”

“I’m as loose a person as I want to be,” but you think naively, of the idea of this thread stretching tightly to the other side of the world. “But thank you. Will you be staying to pester me any longer or may I get to my work as I’m expected to do?”

“At least ask me a question about something else,” Cricket begs. “I still have some time to spare before I have to talk with some stuffy old businessmen. Hah, you should be content with that! You’re at least more exciting than a businessman!”

You roll your eyes but begin to think of a question that would occupy Cricket just a while longer. It takes some odd shifting through the brain but you spit it out anyway, not knowing what it meant.

“What’s the significance of a ruby?” you ask, unbidden, and feeling confused and weird for it.

“A ruby,” Cricket exclaims in mild awe, “you’re interested in crystals, Illya?”

“Not particularly,” you meekly confess, and the emotion on her face like she sees egg on yours makes you regret ever asking.

“Well,” she says, “I can tell you. I sort of have a thing for crystals, myself. It is an extremely noble gem, valued more rarely than a diamond and in my honest opinion, much more beautiful.

“Like the colour red, it also represents intense, faithful passion, and not only that but love and sensuality. It is said to dispel foolish thoughts and protect one from plague and pestilence, subdue one’s lust, and resolve fights. The ruby is considered a stone of courtship. It is suggested to be used by couples to intensify their commitment and their relationship as a whole.

“Many crystals have been reputed to be protective charms against all kinds of things and ruby is no different — apparently it wards off nightmares and psychological attacks, and protects against intruders. Shall I go on?”

“Having fun learning about rocks, are we?” Napoleon stands at the door of your office, looking a little worse for wear from the long flight, but otherwise still within his power to be as contemptible as possible. You couldn’t help but clutch the string right there and then. “Oh but, don’t mind me,” he says, “do continue if you would like, Miss Okasada.”

“Napoleon!” Cricket gasps and jumps up, bounding towards him to give him a big hug, which he returns with about half the enthusiasm on account of his fatigue. “You wanna get a bite to eat or something?”

“Oh, why of course,” Napoleon demures, clearly not forgetting how his last attempt at courting her was stolen from under him by no one other than the head honcho himself. “Ever tried Greek food?”

“No, I haven’t,” she purrs. Being the obvious third wheel here, you’ve taken to working on your paperwork as you wanted to do before she found you. “Care to join us, Illya?”

“Yes Illya,” Napoleon looks at you with real sincerity in his soft brown eyes and you genuinely fight against accompanying him. “I know I wasn’t gone all too long, but I’d say we haven’t eaten together in a while, correct?”

“You’re most likely right,” you try to look really busy and it’s not hard, especially when you pull out some research work you’ve been doing in your off time on portable nuclear fission. “But as you can see, it’s going to be a very busy day today.”

“That’s too bad,” Napoleon pouts a little but comes to his engorged pleased self again when he faces Cricket. “Cricket and I will just have to have a real date, with no interruptions... Whatsoever...”

“Don’t stop on my account,” you say, loudly enough that it interrupts whatever moment Cricket and Napoleon were sharing, although all it does is make him gloat at you. “If you truly need me, I’ll be here.”

The two have a quaint smile between themselves and leave embroiled in vapid small talk. You in the meanwhile, have taken the string and given it 7 knots before wrapping it around your wrist, the prayer in English unfortunately, as you finished each one. To do so was a Jewish custom purported to be attached to Kabbalistic theory, and said to ward off misfortune and the evil eye. It was imparted to you by a Sephardic fellow during your time in Chacua, though you didn’t know what an accomplished scholar in Kabbalah was doing in a labour camp. The way it loops around and meets itself at its ends on your wrists so the string of fate isn’t connected to anyone then — just where you could see it and know it’s there.

No evil eye would scrutinize you tonight. You dimly realize there’s another reason for that.

——

“My caretaker says I might recover suuuuper fast, way faster than the other kids!”

“That’s great,” Napoleon exclaims, and watches the girl eat away at the gallon of ice cream he had brought, which made the nurse very upset since she kept all the kids in rehabilitation on careful diets. The doll he tucked into her cardigan that night was by her side in bed.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” she says, through a mouthful of the stuff. “She keeps saying I was super lucky, super super lucky, because I didn’t need an am- ambu- ampuh-”

“An amputation,” you look up from the origami animals you’ve been making with construction paper. “Am, pew, tay, shun.” Then you hand her a yellow crane, which she takes gleefully and toys with its wings.

“Amputation!” She repeats over and over again. “Amputation! Amputation!” Then stops. “What’s an amputation?”

“It’s when they have to remove a part of you,” you reply.

“Who?”

“The doctors,” Napoleon responds and there’s an interesting thing going on, here in this room where despite having been unconscious for most of the escape, Rebecca very naturally takes to Napoleon, as if she knew what happened. “The nice doctors and nurses and surgeons team up together and amputate you so you’re healthy again.”

“Is the part evil?” she asks, “Is it because the part is evil and bad, and it would hurt me if it stayed?”

“Not evil,” you interject before Napoleon can affirm her. “Bad, sure, but it wasn’t its fault. Sometimes things happen to that part of you and it can’t be helped. The best those doctors can do is to take it away for what’s rest of you that’s still good.”

Napoleon opens his mouth to say something to you when the nurse comes over with something of a little vein throbbing at her temple. “Visiting times are over, Mr. Solo, Mr. Kuryakin,” she huffed, everything about her appearance immaculate save for the bright red stain on her dress and the colourful assortment of mismatched toys in her arms. “Remember to sign out of the guest book when you’re done.”

You both nod your affirmations and sit up, but not before you hand Rebecca more of your cranes, which were the only origami animals you knew how to make anyway. While you leave, Napoleon lingers moments more to hold her once broken hand in his hands, and seems to revel in the fragility of it in his much larger ones. She lets him turn it around, decidedly obedient with Napoleon’s new behaviour, and laughs when he kisses the back of it like a man at sea would when he touches dry land.

“Thank you Mr. Solo,” you hear her voice, farther and farther in the distance as you leave, “for saving me from Illya!”

You turn around.

Napoleon returns you a confused and concerned face from where he was following not too far from you. “Something the matter, Kuryakin?” he inquires.

“Just thought I heard something.”

——

The woman at Carmine’s had eyes very much like a cat, and she bit and caterwauled too. You don’t have sex with women because to put it bluntly, you aren’t interested in women.

But you wanted to see all that Napoleon had had once, and she was the only one you could remember after strings and pages of others. You still remembered the bites on her breasts, and her hair flipping wickedly in and around like she was shaking, trembling, perhaps from the anger of being caught. She was much of the same tonight — she shook like a leaf as you rubbed and licked her to completion, something you tried to do with some modicum of enthusiasm and were surprised you got enthusiastic results.

She doesn’t remember you, only Napoleon. You maneuvered ways of finding out what he was like in bed then.

“He was a nice one,” she purrs, and swung her legs up and down while she laid on her stomach across from you. “Knew how to attend to a lady. He showers you in gifts—” she laughs— “figuratively speaking. He made you feel like the only girl alive.”

“A cliché,” you bemoan, hoping to come off nonchalant about the thing. “With that kind of talk, you’re convincing me he’s some modern day Adonis.”

“There are hotter guys out there,” she pouts, twirling a ringlet of hair. “But him, there was something else. The way he acted probably — not desperate, but needy. Eager to please. And so devoted to the giving.”

You ignore the blood rushing all over your body that was so different than when she tried to return your favour.

“You were kind of the same,” giggling, she rolls over to you and runs her soft fingers through your chest hair. They dance a little over to your arm and then your wrist to fidget with your talisman still tied there. “You wanted so bad to make me come, because you couldn’t come and it made you sad. It’s cute—” She takes a moment to count each knot— “very, very cute.”

“To my recollection, you came twice, even thrice tonight. I’m sure that makes up for my sexual misnomer.”

“Well, maybe it doesn’t!” Then she rolls off the bed and slips on her see through negligee. “Making love’s no fun whatsoever when someone’s keeping something to themselves, real selfishly and all that. You gotta show it like your partner’s showing you or you’re sending bad energies their way.”

“I don’t see any reason to disagree with that,” you respond, continuing to act semi-invested in the entire maudlin affair. You leave the bed and walk over to the bathroom. “I hope you don’t mind but,” and she looks at you with those catlike eyes of her and you discern an odd sense of knowing— “but I have work in the morning and I’d like to take the shower first, if you don’t mind.”

She smiles almost serenely. “Not at all, not at all,” she replies, slipping on her panties and slinking off to grab her robe. “Just don’t use up all the hot water, you fink.”

“I wouldn’t want to be selfish,” you chuckle.

She holds up your talisman like fresh kill. “Never, never be selfish.” She says. You never see that string ever again.

——

“Let go of him.”

“You’re going to have to do a lot more than just that,” Partridge taunts, while his larger than life bodyguards hold Napoleon by the arms. He’s bleeding in some places, bruised in others — but fine, seemingly fine. He looks more distraught that you even came to rescue him.

“If it’s me you want again, you should have just asked,” there was too much space between you and them to do anything. The way the room was laced in something deadly, like traps were hiding in the details of the carpet, left you no choice but to stand with the weight of your gun resting by your ribs instead of in your hands. “You know this is the third time you’ve tried to do something completely ridiculous just to capture one of us?”

“Is it totally ridiculous if it works every time?” he lets out an idiotic bellow of laughter, and then as if to punctuate his point, walks over to Napoleon and motions for his bodyguards to hold him down while he starts stomping him into the ground.

The passionate flash of anger that overcomes you makes you dizzy. You move to stop him but then you hear Napoleon cough out something, “Don’t come near!”

Of course, you don’t listen, because there’s one more kick Partridge has that makes the next sound Napoleon makes a strangled yelp, and it sets the rage in you further and you step once more further and—

Partridge claps like a madman when you step into view of the crossbow, set by motion, to pierce you in the chest mere inches from your heart. The pain and the rage makes the feeling of blood loss so much more aggressive and you stagger onto one knee. Assessing Napoleon, he’s immediately worse for wear — although he tries to compose himself, to say more things to placate you probably.

“Keep going, keep going!” Partridge jeers at you and then you take a closer look at the crossbow that hit you — it had popped out of the globe on wheels. Your instincts were right then. This room was full of traps. “You see Kuryakin,” he gleefully says, “Because I’m not affiliated with THRUSH, I’m just a simple man! A simple man who ruled his little colony in South America and did so happily and righteously until he—” and he addresses Napoleon, gasping and writhing in pain because the bodyguards are still holding him down, but in positions that exacerbated the injuries under his suit— “he and your little spy’s organization took me down and left me destitute!”

“Look at me now!” He gestures to the whole room, “This is all I have left! This is what all my imperial fortune’s worth without the means to go bigger!”

“Taking all this energy to spite one man,” you reply, not sure whether to pull out the arrow or not so you hold your hand there to make sure it doesn’t get jostled. It’s a bolt rather than an arrow — slim but sturdy, and has itself embedded snugly enough. Not enough to kill you, thankfully. You have to guess pulling out would induce more blood loss than you’re capable of handling at the moment, not while Partridge plays his games with the both of you. “Couldn’t you invest this rage into conquering some other country?”

“That would be no good,” Partridge huffs. “UNCLE, and presumably you two in particular, would thwart me again and take it all away from me.” He motions again for the bodyguards, and they hoist Napoleon upwards until he can support himself on his legs. With a graceful flick, Partridge brandishes a small pen knife and makes a long clean cut down the front of Napoleon’s suit, revealing his bruised and battered chest. Your body turns a complete 180, all the blood in your body that rushed around sinks right back into some indeterminate place, leaving you cold and still.

“Really Kuryakin,” he tuts and makes a quick cut between Napoleon’s pectorals, causing him to flinch. Partridge revels in the spot of blood that runs down, and then takes his thumb and runs it through, interrupting its flow with a touch that made Napoleon visibly discomforted. When he turns to you, you hope to hell he regrets it, but instead he laughs again. “Whatever you think I’m going to do to him,” he says, “you’re mistaken. I like to play with my game—” Then looks at you pointedly, as if he knew, and did he know— “Not fuck it.”

When you surged forward, it was everything you weren’t supposed to do. Somewhere on the floor was some kind of taser that seared your body and made you double over completely until the shocks left your body. You could just barely hear Napoleon clamouring for you to stop and to turn away. If only you could tell him to be quiet.

“You’re really showing your true colours here,” Partridge is holding some kind of remote in his other hand that if you were to guess, controlled all the traps in the room. Including the electric shock that incapicitated you. “A brilliant portrait of red.” He teases, then he goes in with the knife on the zipper of Napoleon’s trousers, stops where something very delicate is, and lets you seethe a little before taking it away. “Do you see that Napoleon? I think your friend here likes you more than a friend. Does that bother you? Does it sicken you?”

Napoleon is decidedly quiet, which makes the happiness in Partridge’s face all the more vile. “As a simple man, I really have so very few motives,” he laments. “While you two dying under my hand is the goal, torturing and toying with you is quickly becoming my greatest pleasure.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Another shock goes through you; not half as bad as the initial one, but enough that he makes sure you’re paying attention. “I’m not here to kill you two; I’m here to break you two.

“Originally, I had captured you first, that already set Napoleon up quite nicely. But that doesn’t _break_ a man, it just incenses him.

“When I captured him the second time, it wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t even expect you two to drop in! So that was just my moment to have a little fun. Another ‘third time’s a charm’ kind of situation here, I’d say!

“It is now that I’ve decided that Napoleon needs to be taught a _lesson._ That lesson is to never believe in the good of man. What terrible things it can do to you to know that man will always have evil deep inside them — it just needs to be coaxed out.”

“He’s not a child, Partridge.” you spit, despite seeing the look on Napoleon’s face change to something imperceptible. “No one man is inherently good or evil; we merely have the free will to choose doing good instead of evil.” Another thing that Sephardic man taught you, that incidentally you have a hard time believing.

Your struggle must be obvious, as Partridge shakes his head. “What an unconvincing person you are,” he says, and tips Napoleon’s chin up with his fingers harshly pressing against his jawline, making it so his mouth opens awkwardly. Then he places the tip of his knife on his tongue. Anything to make you writhe on the ground in anger, and it works. “Just like there are sheep that need to be sheared, there are people who need to be taught their place in the world.”

“I imagine that’s how you ended all your speeches when you were a dictator,” you spit.

“How did you know?”

“Was feeling lucky.”

Partridge takes the knife to Napoleon’s cheek instead and makes an extremely slow cut along the contour, the silence of the room perforated only by Napoleon’s heavy breathing and gasps. “We all ‘feel’ lucky don’t we, don’t we Kuryakin. It’s a shame some people were actually born lucky.”

He stops at the corner of Napoleon’s mouth and then takes a moment to admire his handiwork. Napoleon has stopped struggling at this point — done with prolonging it on his end, now he hopes you do your part to finish it as well. You will, you wordlessly assure him from afar. Although with the helpless way he looks, he’s not convinced.

And that’s fair, as you’re never convinced when he says anything assuring as well.

“This is a win-win situation, really—” Partridge quips, “I break Napoleon by inviting him over first, on the pretense that I have you. When he comes over and sees that isn’t the case, I rough him up a bit and tell him that I’m gonna lure you over on the very true pretense that I have _you._

“And now that you’re here, suffering because he’s suffering, Napoleon has to watch as his most trusted companion sacrifices himself to save him — that’s what hurts him the most you know, seeing someone jeopardizing themselves for his sake. He’d rather die himself than see someone else die, especially someone he cares for so very deeply!”

You start to jostle the bolt in your chest while Partridge chatters about. You think the electricity’s numbed your senses enough that it doesn’t really hurt anymore — but you won’t debate the science on that.

“And to break _you,_ my friend, was to merely reveal your sexuality to — and your feelings for — the one man you didn’t want to know. You might be wondering how I figured it out, remember that girl from Carmine’s? The American from the bar? Me hurting Napoleon only comes second to the shocking truth: you’re a poof in love with his partner, and you’d rather die before he ever found out.”

The bolt’s finally freed. You struggle into position.

“So don’t you _see,_ Kuryakin? You’re the one hurting him here, not I. Tell you what, I will give you two choices from here: turn away and I’ll let you walk away without another scratch or — you can join forces with me, and I’ll let Napoleon go! You seem like a capable, very _loyal_ fellow, I believe you would make a worthy ally when I retake that little country in the South! For your efforts, I would even bring Napoleon with us as my gift to you, so you can do whatever you plea—”

With not a moment’s hesitation, you throw the bolt and it lands in Partridge’s chest, causing blood to bloom on his white collared shirt.

Things quickly dissolve into chaos from there: while Partridge flails around from the shot, the bodyguards release Napoleon to help him — a bad move, as Napoleon thwacks one of them in the back of the head. That one, a whole 6’3, topples over the smaller Partridge, and the result is a shriek that expands space and time as the heavy weight of the man pushes the bolt through his chest clean through.

The other one on the left of Napoleon goes to grab him in a chokehold, but just before Napoleon turns fully around to meet his match, the sound of a shot is heard.

You lower your gun as the last man drops unceremoniously onto the ground.

After a terse silence, Napoleon opens his mouth.

“I thought you were a goner when that bolt hit you,” he admits, looking more tired than he had ever been.

“I would have been,” you replied, reaching into your jacket. “But something absorbed the shot just enough.”

The smile Napoleon returns you is ecstatic when you show him your medal of commendation from Survival School, the tiger’s eye still intact and a hole in the gold where the bolt had gone through.

“It pays to keep it close to your heart,” Napoleon cheekily comments, while he strolls over to the unconscious bodyguard and unsteadily pushes him off of the now dead Partridge. “I mean, look at G. Emory now — less of a Partridge, more of a bleeding heart dove.” And then he filches something from his pocket, something you don’t catch from your vantage point.

“The fact that you compared an obvious fascist to a bird more closely associated with easily guilted liberals is unfathomable to me, Napoleon.”

“Well, I think we all willingly bleed for what we believe in,” is what Napoleon says, skipping over to close the distance between you and then stopping inches away from you, the warmth in his eyes like sunlight breaking through pulled blinds or dismantled boards. “Let’s get out of here, Illya.”

“What did you grab from Partridge’s pocket?”

Napoleon smiles with an easy slyness. “I’ll show you when we get back.”

——

You didn’t need to tell him, but you told him anyway, while you were just about to press inside and take him fully, completely — the ruby of his medal with chintzy gold beared witness on the nightstand.

“I love you,” you finally say.

“I know,” Napoleon says back.

“I know you know,” you say right back, “it was pretty much established that time Partridge kidnapped you. But I wanted to say it right to your face once and for all.”

“And I appreciate it,” he presses his mouth into a flat line. “But I’d appreciate it more if you just fucked me.”

“This entire time,” you sigh, as you do press in, very slowly, “I used to get hard at the thought of you being some winsome, wanton thing in bed that did everything in his power to satisfy his partner. Now I know you’re just bossy.”

“Who’s to say I’m not winsome,” Napoleon lets out a soft breath and you stop when you feel his fingers grip just a little on your forearm, waiting for them to relax again before you continue. “Or wanton,” He hitches his hips upward when you start pressing in again and you both moan in unison.

“It’s unbecoming of someone in his 30s.”

“I’m a liar, would you believe I’m a liar? I’m actually 21, I’m in my prime.”

“That would make me a very mature 19 year old,” and then your hips touch the back of his thighs and you’ve made it. “Tell me when it’s okay to move.”

“You’re a fink,” but Napoleon squirms a little to adjust to the intrusion— “I’m not in my 50s suffering from a bad back and chronic muscle pain, I’m a perfectly healthy adult man and—” He cuts himself off with a clipped moan as you pull out just as slowly as you pushed in. “And, I haven’t done this in years so be careful—”

You wonder about that last time. Whatever it had meant to him, you wonder if it carried as much weight as this moment did, or even more. Soon this moment will become like any other part of your life; part of a routine neither of you can put down, will start to instigate casually as it becomes second hand nature, but eventually will bask in times when it simply wasn’t necessary to punctuate the end of a day, or the beginning of it.

Things you’ve put your life on the line for, become blips in the shared history of your lives together, and will look so meaningless being brought up years, months, even mere weeks down the line. Priorities will change, and it’s because you’ll fall into a false sense of security within the dynamic where what you used to care about has been reaffirmed as a constant so persistently that there are better things to focus on.

The anxieties you coached yourself through with new ideologies and practices stemming from that are either forgotten or regarded as trite, or a phase — this doesn’t erase its practicality to you at the time, nor its remaining practicality to others. Things will change. They just had to change.

Eventually quirks and hang-ups become normal things you’ll have to handle with about as much empathy as a child with little understanding of death, and why it does what it does. This was fine.

You’ll squabble, but this was always a function in the relationship.

It would soon be just enough to know you’re close enough to him to hear his heartbeat and feel the rise of his chest as he breathes in and out, in and out.

Hopefully, these are the same sentiments he imparts to you.

END

**Author's Note:**

> :) :’)


End file.
